


On Found Families and other Familiars

by Catzgirl



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Prequel, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-27 16:25:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13884651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catzgirl/pseuds/Catzgirl
Summary: How Nott and Caleb found their way together.





	On Found Families and other Familiars

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this on my lunch break because I'm cry for Nott and Caleb? This is so short, but I just have SO MANY FEELINGS and needed to get them out!

"Are they torturin' you?"

Honestly, it's almost a welcome change of pace. The other prisoners don't speak to him except in curses and threats: they know what he is. What's being done to him and why. It's been so long that anyone spoke to him conversationally that he almost doesn't mind the subject.

Still, life being what it is, he finds himself focused wholly on the next breath, on the  _in hold out_ rhythm of his lungs now that he has control of them. The goblin waits, expectantly.

"They are," he rasps, a good while later. And then, as the cogs in his brain start to catch up to the present, as he filters through the panic and the anger and the way that the room still spins around him, he takes a closer look at the inquisitive little thing. He knows a good deal about goblins. He knows that she has more to fear from him than he from her. As she sits in front of him, arms clasped around herself, the hood of her cloak falling back slightly, he snaps his fingers.

Frumpkin spills from his hands, walks right up to her with a long, noisy stroke against her legs. The girl's jaw drops open, exposing a clutter of jagged fangs, and she asks, "Can I- can I pet 'im?"

"You most certainly may." His voice is as wrecked as he feels, but she doesn't seem to notice as she gathers the tabby cat into her arms, tension running out of her hunched shoulders. She looks at him and whispers in a tone that's almost conspiratorial, "Listen, I've got a plan."

"Are you going to kill me?" He asks, because that's who he is now, that's what he expects from people, but her grin doesn't falter a bit.

"No 'm not."

It's her favorite words, he learns. "Are you hungry?" At the dinner scramble, guards throwing ration packs into the crowd of prisoners, leaving them to scrounge or scrap for them. It's hard enough for him to get his own, harder still for a slip of a girl no matter how sharp her elbows. They share a pack between them, generally, but it's hard for her to ask for things so he has learned to offer often and freely.

"Are you cold?" Late at night, huddled in a corner with a scant few feet between them, and he can see her shivering in her cloak. He only asks for the sake of propriety, to be absolutely sure.

She rolls to face him, yellow eyes backlit with red in the darkness, grumbles "'m not," even as she trembles. He flicks his fingers, sends Frumpkin to curl around her, and shuffles closer so that he can cover her with his scrap of blanket. It leaves the entire back of his body open to the cold, but he doesn't mind as Frumpkin purrs and kneads between them and the little girl finally drifts into some semblance of peaceful rest.

"Did they hurt you?" He's always known the exact time, whether it's day or night, the exact second of the hour off the top of his head. He knows he's been gone longer, this time, knows he's covered in his own sick and filth, that he needs to find a way to dry himself before sickness sets in again.

She's been alone, though, for far longer than he's comfortable with, so he checks on her first. Frumpkin hangs around her neck like a scarf, chirping to see his master come back, but Nott ducks her head away from him.

"Are you hurt?" He asks again because he needs to know how badly he's failed. He needs to know how to make it right.

"'m not," she mutters, "'m fine, 'm not hurt." When she does look at him it's with great big moon-eyes that stop his heart in his chest, " _You're_ hurt," she says, and her voice wavers with it as she sidles closer to him, clutches at his leg until he sits, "Caleb they're killing you." Her hands pat his cheek, his hair, fooling neither of them as the tears well up, "I can't get out on my own. I need your help. You've gotta-"

"Hey," he shushes, wraps her in a hug, "Don't cry, little one,  _mein_ _Kind_ , it's okay, don't cry."

Her shoulders shake but she hisses at him through clenched teeth, " _'m not_ ," and he lets it be. She needs her hope and he needs—well. His motives are less than altruistic, he can admit.

He needs her as bad as she needs him. He needs this little bit of redemption, some good deeds under his belt before he goes to meet his maker. And the goblin girl makes it easy for him, acts so much like a sister to him that it hardly feels like a role he's step[ing into.

She needs her hope, and he needs to keep her safe. Needs to know that there's enough of him left to accomplish that.

"That was very kind of you," he says the last time they take him, soaking wet and teeth chattering and too skinny and—this place will be his tomb. He knows that now. It should be a bigger point of contention for him, maybe, but his only concern is for his goblin friend. She ignores him, head between her knees, but he sits next to her and slings one arm around her shoulders, strives to master himself so that she cannot feel how wrecked he is, how his very joints and bones are giving out from the malnutrition (why should he eat when she's always hungry? When she's the one that will survive this place?) and the constant sickness (the water and the cold and he can't breathe a full breath, the healing potions come less frequently now, are being saved for their next victim because even  _they_ pay close enough attention to know he won't last much longer) and the fear that envelopes him in every moment, waking or otherwise (and how can he explain to her that the panic has sept into his very soul? There is no recovery from this.) He masters himself to be the friend to her that she's been to him. He has no compunctions about it: he'd have stopped fighting a long time ago if she hadn't appeared in his life.

Maybe the ultimate cruelty isn't the torture, isn't the starvation, isn't the imprisonment. Maybe it's knowing that he'll never have the chance to repay her. That all their planning and dreaming will go to waste.

"It was kind of you to try to stop them," he says after a long moment, "You're very brave."

"'m not," she whispers, but she tilts so that her body leans against his. They prop each other up, and he fights to master himself so that she cannot feel how his heart breaks for her, "I shoulda killed them. I shoulda done something more. 'm not brave at all!"

He lets the silence settle between them, comfortable even for the topic at hand. What can he say to that? How can he assure her when it all will end with his death, anyways?

Silence isn't a goblin strong-suit, and eventually she peers up at him from under her hood, whispering, "Tonight. We go tonight. Let's give it a go. 'm not going to—I can't just  _watch_ , Caleb," and she doesn't move but the tenor of her voice is raising to something plaintive, something hysterical, "I'm not gonna watch them kill you. 'm not."

What has he got to lose? He considers the pair of them, how much damage she can do with her hidden daggers, what little magic he can muster after all these months of withering. There's fire in his veins that he—he'd use, for her. If it gave her a shot.

He knows a good deal about goblins—he's had to, in the past, in the _before_ that seems like a lifetime ago. His word choice is based on education and a bit of guesswork, and he's not at all surprised by her reaction when he says, "That's a good name for you," just smiles at her start of surprise, of shock, and clarifies, "You're always on about it. What you're not. I think it suits you," and he tugs her hood over her face, holds it so that she has to struggle to get it back up as he uses the distraction to tickle her side. The goblin cackles freely into the dank and dreary prison commons, flails and cackles, and he declares, "It's decided! Nott the Brave, that'll be your name!"

Nott starts crying anew, but he lets it be this time. Wants to tell her that he's sorry, that he may not survive the escape attempt; it's unnecessary. She's young but she isn't stupid. She knows the risks, the odds.

Frumpkin settles on their feet, and Caleb and Nott start to finalize their bid for freedom. Caleb Widogast, a man on the lam who can't let his past catch him, and his best friend in the entire world, a little goblin girl without clan but packing plenty of spunk besides: Nott the Brave.

**Author's Note:**

> I was reading the 5e Goblin Race wiki, and it talked about how goblins don't get names when they're born (like birthdays,) and that getting a name is a Super Big Deal is goblin-kind, as the name usually stems from some remarkable trait about that particular goblin (and that it can be good or bad or neither.)  
> Caleb gave Nott a birthday in the last episode, so I wanted to give her a name.


End file.
